Category Archives: glow water

Top 10 Popular Posts of 2012

I can’t believe that today is the last day of 2012. What a great year this has been. We have done so many fun things and started this blog to be able to share them with everyone. I thought I would share our top 10 popular posts of 2012. These are the most popular, non-seasonal posts according to our stats.

Our first most popular post of 2012 is our DIY light table. This light table is made with a plastic storage tote, some rope lights and piece of acrylic plastic. The kids have had a lot of fun with this light table.

Our second popular post of 2012 was our post on The Popcorn Book by Tomie de Paola. For our activity as part of the Virtual Book Club for Kids in November, we read The Popcorn Book, then coloured some popcorn kernels and then Sammie played and made a picture with these coloured popcorn kernels.

Our third most popular post of 2012 was our Glass and Glue Suncatchers. These suncatchers were fun to make and look so pretty hanging up in the window.

The next most popular post of 2012 was our post on helping Sammie learn her name. Sammie had fun doing some activities to help her learn to recognize and spell her name as she got ready to start school.

The next popular post of 2012 was our activity for July’s Virtual Book Club for Kids. We read the Napping House and did some fun activities to go along with the book. The girls did some colour by number sheets and a sequencing activity based on the book as well.

This popular post of 2012, glowing vinegar ice cubes and baking soda, was one of our favourite activities of the year. I froze some vinegar mixed with tonic water and glow water. Then the girls played with these ice cubes and some baking soda under the black light.

This popular post of 2012 was so much fun to make and play with. Our sandy playdough was such a different kind of play dough than anything we’ve ever made or played with before. The girls loved the idea of having sand in their play dough and the texture was so cool to touch.

The funnels, tubes and water was one of our most popular posts of 2012. I made this water toy by myself and am so proud of being able to do it without help. The girls love playing with it in their water table. Coloured water looks so neat running down through the tubes.

Our beaded wind chimes is one of our most popular posts of 2012. Sammie had so much fun making these wind chimes. They are very easy to make and a great way for a child to work on their fine motor skillls. They also look and sound so pretty.

This painted fingernail counting game is another of our popular posts of 2012. I made up this fun game to help Sammie with her counting as another way to get her ready for school. Included in the post is a link to a 10 sided die to use with the game.

We had so much fun this year. The girls made so many great crafts and did so many great activities. I can’t wait to see what we do in 2013.

I would like to wish each and everyone of you a very Happy New Year and I look forward to sharing many new posts with you in the new year.

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Sammie recently asked to play with our black light and while trying to think of something new for her to do with the black lights on, I remembered this post from The Golden Gleam. They froze some vinegar into ice cubes to play with baking soda in a sink.

I wondered how it would work if I added some glow water to the vinegar. To learn how to make glow water, please see my Glowing Ice Cubes post, as I have instructions there.

So I put a little bit of glow water in the bottom of each ice cube spot, just enough to cover the bottom of the space and then added vinegar to fill each one. I froze them over night. As you can see in the photo below, the green and yellow glow water glows the best.

I took the ice cubes out of the trays and dumped some baking soda into a shallow tub and turned on the black lights.

The girls thought it was so cool to see the ice cubes glowing and how the baking soda didn’t glow.

They noticed when they added the ice cubes to the baking soda that there wasn’t the quite the same reaction as normal vinegar and baking soda play. There was no immediate big fizzing, just a little sizzle.

Then the girls figured out that if you put baking soda on top of the ice cubes and held it up to your ear, you could hear it fizzing away. So they started piling the baking soda onto the ice cubes.

They started building towers with the ice cubes and using the baking soda as a glue to hold them together. Maddie pointed out that little pieces of ice were starting to flake off of the ice cubes and that the cubes were getting soft, instead of just melting. Maddie could also break the ice cubes with her hands.

As they played and the ice cubes melted, the baking soda began to glow as well as the cubes. The girls continued building with the glowing baking soda and what was left of the ice cubes.

Maddie and Sammie had a lot of fun playing with the glowing ice cubes and baking soda under the black lights. Even if they didn’t get the same exciting fizzing reaction as normal vinegar and baking soda, they really liked playing with the glowing version.

I think we may have to try playing with glowing liquid vinegar and baking soda soon Then they can see how the normal fizzing reaction looks under the black lights.

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We’ve been spending quite a bit of time playing and exploring with our black lights Earlier we shared our Glowing Ice Cubes and our Glowing Goop. They were both so much fun and so cool to see how they glow under the black lights.

Today we continue with our glowing play and share our glowing slime I didn’t get any pictures of us making the slime, as I was the one making it and my hands were pretty messy.

I’ve heard this called slime, flubber, gak, silly putty and so many other names. We just call it slime

This is how I made our slime. I didn’t really measure anything, just sort of followed the recipe I found online at Steve Spangler Science.

In one cup, I poured in some white Elmer’s glue and added in about the same, maybe a bit more of our yellow glow water (diluted quite a bit). In a second cup, I mixed about a cup of water with 1 teaspoon of Borax. Stir each cup until they are mixed. Then add about 1 tbsp of the Borax mixture to the glue and water mixture in a bigger container. Stir until it started to thicken and started to get stringy. Then I got my hands in there and mix until it was a solid. There was a little bit of water left in my container and I just dumped it out. Then the slime was ready to play with

I had actually made up two batches of slime, as I was reading that if you add more of the Borax mixture to your glue and water mixture, the slime becomes more like silly putty. It worked My second batch was more solid and less slimy than the first batch.

I think I should have measured a bit more as both batches are very sticky and glue-like. We had made a batch of slime up a few months ago and really measured everything and that slime was very slimy and not sticky.

All ready to play with

Sammie wasn’t too sure about touching it at first, but it didn’t take long for her to get right into the play

She immediately mixed the two batches together to make one big blob lol

She loved picking it up and letting it stretch and ooze down

We had put some in a strainer and watched it ooze out. So neat

To save your slime, after you are done playing with it. Store it in a sealed Ziploc bag or something else air-tight. It should last for quite awhile as long as it is sealed.

I would suggest not playing with this on carpet or furniture as it can stick and maybe stain.
This is the Steve Spangler Science. recipe for it:

equal parts glue and warm water mixed in one cup, you can add colouring to this mixture
1/2 cup warm water mixed with 1 tsp of Borax mixed in a second cup
slowly add a bit of the Borax and water to your glue and water mix while stirring the mixtures together

Here are some other sites that have made slime and some different ways to play with it

This was so much fun to play with Ours was very sticky though and we had a hard time getting it off our hands while playing with it. I think next time, I will definitely measure and follow the recipe closer lol

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Today I’m going to share Sammie playing with goop under the black lights

I had mentioned in the last post that we tried using the UV flashlights as our black lights and how they didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Well, I found some black light light fixtures at a Canadian Tire store. I attached them to the wall in our downstairs bathroom, which has no windows, making it great for our black light play

We still had some cornstarch left over from when we had played with goop outside. The cornstarch had dried out and went back to being a powder again, so I decided to just reuse that cornstarch. I took some of yellow glow water and dilated it.

Then Sammie took over and dumped the glow water into the bowl of cornstarch and started mixing it

I love how the glow water glows, but the cornstarch doesn’t It makes such an interesting contrast.

Getting those hands right in there to mix it up

Letting the goop run and drip out of her hands

Mixing more glow water into the goop

Goopy hands using a spoon to mix it up some more

She put some goop into the strainer that you can see in the picture above, to watch it run and drip out, but I didn’t get a picture of it, as my hands were pretty much covered in goop as well lol I think I like playing with goop as much as Sammie does

This was a lot of fun Sammie loved seeing it glow and watching how the glow changed as she mixed the goop up

We found that the more she mixed the goop up, the less it glowed. She kept adding more glow water to it, to keep it glowing. I’m not sure if this was because the cornstarch that we used was already coloured purple, or whether that’s just how the glow water works. I think next time we play with glowing goop, we will use new cornstarch and see if it glows longer and better.

We will be sharing more glowing black light fun over the next few days Next up will be glowing slime and silly putty

I recently discovered black light play through this awesome blog Growing A Jeweled Rose. She has a whole section on playing with a black light Black Light Play I honestly can not rave about this blog enough, they do lots of awesome sensory baths and play and lots of messy play

Inspired by her black light play, I really wanted to try some with Sammie and Maddie. I purchased a couple of these UV flashlights for us to use. Warning, these flashlights are extremely bright and hurt your eyes to look directly at. I am currently searching for a better black light to use.

I made up a bunch of glow water (water that reacts to the black lights). To make the glow water, you need some highlighters (yellow works the best), open them up and take out the pad that’s inside. Soak the pad in some regular water. I think I used maybe 2 cups of water for each colour. I tried both the big highlighters and the pen sized highlighters. The big ones worked better.

I made up yellow, blue, purple, green, pink and orange. The blue and purple didn’t react to the black light at all. The pink and orange react slightly. But the green and yellow, wow they glow a lot!

Our glow water under normal lights

And under the black light

Once the glow water is made, you can take this water and dilute it a lot and it will still glow.

I took some of each colour that reacted and diluted it a bit more and filled a couple ice cube trays and some baby food containers. Then I froze them all.

I also found out by reading on Growing A Jeweled Rose. that tonic water reacts under the black lights as well. So I bought a bottle of it and froze some of it as well.

While they were freezing, I tried to find a room in the house that we could play with them in. The only room that would work, (dark enough and safe to play with water in) was the upstairs bathroom. I had to pin some towels over the window to block out some light but it worked.

I put a shallow tote on the floor, dumped all the frozen glowing things into it, and set the UV flashlights around the tote. I tried to point the lights towards the ice, but without shining into any one’s eyes. It worked okay, but I really think we need a better black light.

Here is our frozen glowing cubes The yellow and green cubes react the most

Sammie was completely amazed with it She loved playing with the ice and seeing it glow too She spent the most time trying to build a castle with them and just moving them around the tote.

They glowed much better with the UV flashlight pointed directly at them.

The green cube that glowed the most

This was a lot of fun We just loved seeing them glow in the dark and checking out what else glowed under the black light

We will be posting lots of other activities that we are doing with the black lights, like slime and goop

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